Hostname: page-component-6b989bf9dc-zrclq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-14T20:15:48.161Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Modern political views and the emergence of early complex societies in the Bronze Age Mediterranean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Borja Legarra Herrero*
Affiliation:
*School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK (Email: blh10@le.ac.uk)

Extract

The Tea Party, the Arab Spring and the _Occupy movements may seem to have little in common. They respond to very different circumstances, and they are fuelled by very different ideologies. Furthermore, they do not represent homogeneous movements and each of them amalgamates very different groups with very different interests. Stripped of their most obvious traits, however, they share a common dissatisfaction with the nature of power in the present world, and each has opened a debate on the nature and legitimacy of current power structures.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arteaga Matute, O. 2000. La sociedad clasista inicial y el origen del Estado en el territorio de El Argar. Revista Atlántico Mediterránea de Prehistoria y Arqueologia Social 3: 121219.Google Scholar
Branigan, K. 1987. The economic role of the first palaces, in Hägg, R. & Marinatos, N. (ed.) The function of the Minoan palaces. Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium at the Swedish Institute in Athens, 10-16 June, 1984 (Svenska Institutet i Athen, Skrifter 35): 245–49. Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen.Google Scholar
Cámara Serrano, J. A. & Molina González, F.. 2006. Social selection of data, determinism and scientific relevance in interpretations of social development in the late prehistory of the Iberian southeast, in Daz-del-Rio, P. & Garcia Sanjuán, L. (ed.) Social inequality in Iberian late prehistory (British Archaeological Reports international series 1525): 2136. Oxford: Archaeopress.Google Scholar
Chapman, R. 2008. Alternative states, in Habu, J., Fawcett, C. & Matsunaga, J. M. (ed.) Evaluating multiple narratives: beyond nationalist, colonialist, imperialist archaeologies: 144–65. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Cherry, J. F. 1986. Polities and palaces: some problems in Minoan state formation, in Cherry, J. F. & Renfrew, C. (ed.) Peer polity interaction and socio-political change: 1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Colburn, C. S. 2008. Exotica and the early Minoan elite: eastern imports in Prepalatial Crete. American Journal of Archaeology 112: 225–46.Google Scholar
Galaty, M. L., Parkinson, W. A., Cherry, J. F., Cline, E. H., Kardulias, P. N., Schon, R., Sherratt, S., Thomas, H. & Wengrow, D.. 2010. Interaction amidst diversity: an introduction to the eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age, in Parkinson, W. A. & Galaty, M. L. (ed.) Archaic state interaction: the eastern Mediterranean in the Bronze Age: 2952. Santa Fe (NM): School for Advanced Research Press.Google Scholar
García Sanjuán, L. & Díaz-Del-Río, P.. 2006. Advances, problems and perspectives in the study of social inequality in Iberian late prehistory, in Díaz-Del-Río, P. & García Sanjuán, L. (ed.) Social inequality in Iberian late prehistory (British Archaeological Reports international series 1525): 110. Oxford: Archaeopress.Google Scholar
Gilman, A. 1981. The development of social stratification in Bronze Age Europe. Current Anthropology 22: 123.Google Scholar
Gilman, A. 1990. The Mafia hypothesis, in Markey, T. L. & Greppin, J. A. C. (ed.) When worlds collide: the Indo-Europeans and the pre-Indo-Europeans (Linguistica extranea 19): 151–69. Ann Arbor (MI): Karoma.Google Scholar
Gilman, A. 2001. Assessing political development in Copper and Bronze Age southeast Spain, in Haas, J. (ed.) From leaders to rulers: 5984. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.Google Scholar
Halstead, P. 1988. On redistribution and the origin of Minoan-Mycenaean palatial economies, in French, E. B. & Wardle, K. A. (ed.) Problems in Greek prehistory. British School of Archaeology at Athens, centenary conference, Manchester 1986: 519–30. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press.Google Scholar
Halstead, P. 1995. From sharing to hoarding: the Neolithic foundations of Aegean Bronze Age society?, in Laffineur, R. & Niemeier, W. D. (ed.) Politeia: society and state in the Aegean Bronze Age. Proceedings of the 5th International Aegean Conference, University of Heidelberg, Archäologisches Institut, 10-13 April 1994 (Aegaeum 12): 1120. Liège: Université de Liège.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y. 2002. What future for the ‘Minoan’ past? Re-thinking the Minoan archaeology, in Hamilakis, Y. (ed.) Labyrinth revisited. Rethinking ‘Minoan’ archaeology: 229. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y. 2007. The nation and its ruins: antiquity, archaeology, and national imagination in Greece. Oxford:Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hayden, B. & Villeneuve, S.. 2010. Who benefits from complexity? A view from Futuna, in Price, T. D. & Feinman, G. M. (ed.) Pathways to power. New perspectives on the emergence of social inequality: 95146. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Knappett, C. 2011. A regional network approach to Protopalatial complexity, in Schoep, I., Tomkins, P. & Driessen, J. (ed.) Back to the beginning: reassessing social and political complexity on Crete during the Early and Middle Bronze Age: 384402. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Legarra Herrero, B. 2011. The construction, deconstruction and non-construction of hierarchies in the funerary record of Prepalatial Crete, in Schoep, I., Tomkins, P. & Driessen, J. (ed.) Back to the beginning: reassessing social and political complexity on Crete during the Early andMiddle Bronze Age: 325–57. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Lull, V. 1983. La ‘cultura’ de El Argar: un modelo para el estudio de las formaciones económico-sociales prehistóricas. Madrid: Akal.Google Scholar
Lull, V. & Micó, R.. 2011. Archaeology of the origin of the state: the theories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lull, V., Micó, R., Rihuete Herrada, C. & Risch, R.. 2010. Metal and social relations of production in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE in the southeast of the Iberian peninsula. Trabajos de Prehistoria 67: 323–47.Google Scholar
Manning, S. 2008. Formation of the palaces, in Shelmerdine, C. W. (ed.) The Cambridge companion to the Aegean Bronze Age: 105–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McGuire, R. H. 2008. Archaeology as political action (California series in public anthropology 17). Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mrozowski, S. A. 2012. Pragmatism and the relevancy of archaeology for contemporary society, in Rockman, M. & Flatman, J. (ed.) Archaeology in society: its relevance in the modern world: 239–56. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Nocete, F. 1994. Space as coercion: the transition to the state in the social formations of La Campiña, Upper Guadalquivir Valley, Spain, ca. 1900-1600 BC. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 13: 171200.Google Scholar
Nocete, F., Lizcano, R., Peramo, A. & Gómez, E.. 2010. Emergence, collapse and continuity of the first political system in the Guadalquivir basin from the fourth to the second millennium BC: the long-term sequence of Úbeda (Spain). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29: 219–37.Google Scholar
Poursat, J. C. 2011. The emergence of elite groups at Protopalatial Malia: a biography of Quartier Mu, in Schoep, I., Tomkins, P. & Driessen, J. (ed.) Back to the beginning: reassessing social and political complexity on Crete during the Early and Middle Bronze Age: 177–83. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. 1972. The emergence of civilisation: the Cyclades and the Aegean in the third millennium BC. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Sbonias, K. 1999. Social development management of production and symbolic representation in Prepalatial Crete, in Chaniotis, A. (ed.) From Minoan farmers to Roman traders: sidelights on the economy of ancient Crete: 2551. Stuttgart: F. Steiner.Google Scholar
Schoep, I. 2006. Looking beyond the first palaces: elites and the agency of power in EM III-MM II Crete. American Journal of Archaeology 110: 3764.Google Scholar
Schoep, I. & Knappett, C.. 2004. Dual emergence: evolving heterarchy, exploding hierarchy, in Barrett, J. C. & Halstead, P. (ed.) The emergence of civilisation revisited (Sheffield studies in Aegean archaeology 6): 2137. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Tilley, C. 1990. Archaeology as socio-political action in the present, in Pinsky, V. & Wylie, A. (ed.) Critical traditions in contemporary archaeology: essays in the philosophy, history and socio-politics of archaeology: 104–16. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Watkins, J. 2012. Looking forward to the past: archaeology through rose-coloured glasses, in Rockman, M. & Flatman, J. (ed.) Archaeology in society: its relevance in the modern world: 257–66. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Wiessner, P. 2002. The vines of complexity: egalitarian structures and the institutionalization of inequality among the Enga. Current Anthropology 43: 233–69.Google Scholar
Wiessner, P. 2009. The power of one? Big men revisited, in Vaughn, K. J., Eerkens, J. W. & Kantner, J. (ed.) The evolution of leadership: transitions in decision-making from small-scale to middle-range societies: 195222. Santa Fe (NM): School for Advanced Research Press.Google Scholar